Palm has as good as any "as of now" bracket. He truly does look at resume's, rather than others who overseed high rep team (who should become better) but have not done anything.
That being said I find "as of now" brackets limiting in information.
At year end, people tend to underrate OOC. But at this point of the year we have the opposite issue. OOC is pretty much your entire resume, and some teams clearly have the opportunity and the conference to make more moves than others. The as of now approach does not capture this impact, so it has little predictive value - its not a great tracking measure
I really do like making a bracket off RPIforecast data. It incorporates teams that have the big conference advantage, which is really key going forward. You can see it when you see the final predicted numbers. For example, the top team in the Big 12 is tracking to have one hell of a resume, whomever it may be. You could also see where Syracuse would sit with a 13-5 record in the ACC.
http://www.rpiforecast.com/index2.html
The predictions are based on prior games, so it does in effect capture what has happened so far. Your not playing god - its unbisaed Only problem is you have to rely on Sagarin, and for some reason its crapping on Syracuse this year. The prediction of 13-5 seems at least one game too low I just projected them as #1 east, and ignored the data Syracuse, but followed it for everybody else.
Bracket almost finished, and will post it in a separate ongoing thread.
But based on data above, and my adjustment for Syracuse
West
1. Arizona
2. Michigan St
3. San Diego St
4. Duke
Midwest
1. Wisconsin
2. Oklahoma St
3. Wichita St
4. Kentucky
South
1. Iowa St
2. Florida
3. Iowa
4. Ohio St
East
1. Syracuse
2. Villanova
3. Kansas
4. UMass
I had Georgetown/UConn playing in the 8/9 game as well - committee will try to make it if they can, and they are eastern teams as well.
One way this will not happen (assuming Villanova is #2 or #3 in the East ) is if Georgetown becomes the third best team in the Big East. Georgetown would need to be in a different region as the top 3 from each conference must be in a different region. However, in my bracket I moved Xavier up one line to #8 - the same line as Georgetown. So in essence Xavier is the third team from the Big East. Committee is then flexible with Georgetown.
Anyway as you can see from above:
- There are limitations that can make the match up hard to do.
- But there are also slight movements that can be made to accomodate the game in certain circumstances. The committee could easily do what I did above, and move Xavier up a line to get a matchup it wants.
